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    Been a while Archived Message

    Posted by Jase on 11/3/2012, 10:27 pm

    Ok, so its been a while since I was on here. Am still buying stuff from TT via the web, but I've made the big move to Kerikeri from Wellington after splitting with my wife over 2 years ago. Some of you guys know that, some don't. Anyway, got an amazing partner, 3 great step kids and one of my own on the way. Oh, and I got engaged last week too. So life is pretty sweet. In fact, my partner is so good she bought me a T-curve 10-15kg rock rod and a Shimano 6500 BTR for my birthday....and I never even indicated that was the gear I wanted. I'm a lucky man.

    I've also had the chance to experience some pretty amazing fishing up here. Been into quite a few snapper off the rocks which is something I couldn't do a lot of in Wellies. The opportunities up here are pretty good. The down side is I don't get to spend as much time with some people as I want to, but hey, I'm lucky as some of you are able to come to me.

    Last weekend I decided to take my 9y/o step daughter fishing for kingfish after we had one rip through our berley a few weeks back. Caitlin is a tiny little thing. She's barely 28kg, but I tell you what, she's a machine. I had her out until 12:30am this morning chasing Johnies off a local wharf. She's caught several legal snapper in the past few months off the bricks. Her best is 1.52kg.

    Anyway, back to the kingfish. After deploying berley and having heaps of piper playing in the trail we started to get a few small herrings, mackerel and finally a decent kahawai. Using my Backbone Elite rod with 8kg braid on it for baitfish Caitlin quickly had me a livey, and out it went. After about half an hour of trying to get it to sit where I wanted it with wind against tide and the balloon drag being an issue I blew up another balloon half the size and put the bait out on a slightly different angle. That solved the issue and he swam back and forth about 15m from our rock. After about 2hrs and another 2 berley bombs I got a bit bored watching the balloon and put it in freespool and began straylining the bait set for snapper with half a pilchard. I probably got 5 or 6 small snapper and 2 just legal ones and then started to consider the idea of packing up. The tide was high, the wind was right in our faces and the sun was still bloody hot. I deployed another bait and was watching Dyon (one of my workmates) playing a pretty big kahawai when my line went tight and I thought I was finally into a decent fish. Now it should be said that this gear, while it is 5-8kg gear its far from suitable for stopping anything decent off the bricks with weed and reef all around us. My reel holds 150m of braid, and that emptied fast! 20 seconds and I was down to about 10 turns when I clamped down on the reel and turned it. I had about 3/4 of the spool back when it went the opposite direction at the same rate and had me chasing it with the rod above my head to keep it off the rock in front. A full 10 minutes went by with my spool emptying 3 times before I finally saw colour and knew my dream of finally landing a kingi was close. I'd been here before so this time I conciously told myself not to panic. As it rolled up to the surface and slid onto its side it saw Dyon with the gaff and was off again. I screamed at Caitlin to jump out of the way and was off again chasing it across the rocks. This time I picked my spot and as it rolled onto its side this time Dyon sank the gaff into its lip and slid it onto the rock. A few yeehaa's and high fives later an excited little girl exploded with expletives her mum would kill me for, but summed it up perfectly, and called her mum to tell her.

    So, my little 8kg set has made me proud and allowed me to experience something I have wanted for a long time. 11.7kg on 8kg line off the rocks is not a bad feat at all, but a whole lot of luck went my way and I have now realised a dream.


    My first Kingi. 11.7kg on 8kg braid. The gear on the ground in the background did the damage.

    Caitlin holding my kingi pre filleting.


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